


Heroes

by windstar127



Category: Last Exile, Last Exile: Fam The Silver Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 14:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windstar127/pseuds/windstar127
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character study of Tatiana</p><p>* * *</p><p>"Heroes die young, Tatiana.  Don't be one of them."</p><p>Alex Rowe once said to her, after she had tried something risky and spectacular for no good reason.  At the time, she didn't believe him.  As a cocky fifteen year old pilot, just two years out of the Academy in her bright red vanship with Alis at her side, she thought she could take on the world and win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes

"Heroes die young, Tatiana. Don't be one of them."

Alex Rowe once said to her, after she had tried something risky and spectacular for no good reason. At the time, she didn't believe him. As a cocky fifteen year old pilot, just two years out of the Academy in her bright red vanship with Alis at her side, she thought she could take on the world and win.

But that was a very long time ago, before they found the world of blue skies and golden fields.

Before Alex died at the guns of the Silvana and Sophia became their empress.

Before she watched a headstrong and foolhardy boy, confident that his courage and devotion would see him through the day (confident that he was the hero destined to save them all), rush out against the enemy outnumbered and outgunned. She tried to stop him (had, for a fleeting instant, thought about joining him), but in the end, she took her place on the bridge and took command of the fleet. They found him later, she and Alis, after the battle was over and won and pulled his broken body from the wreckage of his crashed vanship.

Alex Rowe's words made sense then. That boy, that foolish golden boy, thought he was a hero from a storybook and behaved as he thought a hero should. The heroes in the stories always survived for no one told stories about the ones who didn't.

That day, she knew she would never be a hero.

Claus Valca lived, though the doctors said he would never walk again. Or fly again. That redhaired girl, his navi, hated her (had always hated her, but only now was it blatantly visible on her face) because she still flew in the brilliant blue sky when he could not. They called her a coward (and still do), that girl and her friends, for not going in after the boy.

They call that boy a hero.

Once, it would have rankled her soul, but now, she ignores it.

Her red vanship gathers dust in the hangar now, and when she dons her uniform, it's that of a ship's captain and not a vanship pilot. Her place is at the bridge, not the cockpit, but Alis, golden Alis with the gentle smile, is still at her side. The lives of her people depend on her, and she will not risk them to satisfy her pride.

But unlike that boy, she still soars in the azure sky to the ends of the world on wings of flame and wind.

She was never meant to be a hero, but she was meant to fly.


End file.
